[ There is a latter part of this memory — when what remains of Nilfgaard's forces find her, and she wakes blearily hours later, slumped against a burned-dead tree. She won't know that she has burned all of the chaos out of herself entirely until she escapes her captors, until she attempts to open a portal in the midst of an empty forest and continually meets with failure. All of this will have a cost, and the Yennefer who is currently reliving this now is well aware of it, something the version of her in the memory itself can't possibly understand yet.
The woman who stands in the memory now is some combination of the two, and her familiarity with the man who reaches out a hand to her wars with her instinctive understanding of what is meant to come next. This part is unfamiliar, unknown, even as she opens her eyes, gaze swimming with tears of fury that blur the hills of Sodden into little more than charred blackness. ]
There was a cost.
[ A cost for her, and one that she hadn't even considered but perhaps had sensed somewhere, deep down; she'd never displayed that much power before and hasn't since, always knowing that there would be a consequence to wielding so much unchecked chaos. ]
There's always a cost. [ Her unseeing gaze finally rises to his face, and she sees him then, truly sees him standing in the midst of the destruction she'd wrought. ]
Aleksander. [ Her voice dawns with recognition, even if her expression changes little beyond that flicker in her eyes. ]
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The woman who stands in the memory now is some combination of the two, and her familiarity with the man who reaches out a hand to her wars with her instinctive understanding of what is meant to come next. This part is unfamiliar, unknown, even as she opens her eyes, gaze swimming with tears of fury that blur the hills of Sodden into little more than charred blackness. ]
There was a cost.
[ A cost for her, and one that she hadn't even considered but perhaps had sensed somewhere, deep down; she'd never displayed that much power before and hasn't since, always knowing that there would be a consequence to wielding so much unchecked chaos. ]
There's always a cost. [ Her unseeing gaze finally rises to his face, and she sees him then, truly sees him standing in the midst of the destruction she'd wrought. ]
Aleksander. [ Her voice dawns with recognition, even if her expression changes little beyond that flicker in her eyes. ]